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Frontiers in Energy >> 2019, Volume 13, Issue 3 doi: 10.1007/s11708-019-0612-4

A numerical study of non-Darcy flow in EGS heat reservoirs during heat extraction

. Laboratory of Advanced Energy Systems, Guangdong Key Laboratory of New and Renewable Energy Research and Development, CAS Key Laboratory of Renewable Energy, Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China.. Guangdong Hydrogeology Battalion, Guangzhou 510510, China

Accepted: 2019-02-25 Available online: 2019-02-25

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Abstract

Underground non-Darcy fluid flow has been observed and investigated for decades in the petroleum industry. It is deduced by analogy that the fluid flow in enhanced geothermal system (EGS) heat reservoirs may also be in the non-Darcy regime under some conditions. In this paper, a transient 3D model was presented, taking into consideration the non-Darcy fluid flow in EGS heat reservoirs, to simulate the EGS long-term heat extraction process. Then, the non-Darcy flow behavior in water- and supercritical CO (SCCO )-based EGSs was simulated and discussed. It is found that non-Darcy effects decrease the mass flow rate of the fluid injected and reduce the heat extraction rate of EGS as a flow resistance in addition to the Darcy resistance which is imposed to the seepage flow in EGS heat reservoirs. Compared with the water-EGS, the SCCO -EGS are more prone to experiencing much stronger non-Darcy flow due to the much larger mobility of the SCCO . The non-Darcy flow in SCCO - EGSs may thus greatly reduce their heat extraction performance. Further, a criterion was analyzed and proposed to judge the onset of the non-Darcy flow in EGS heat reservoirs. The fluid flow rate and the initial thermal state of the reservoir were taken and the characteristic Forchheimer number of an EGS was calculated. If the calculated Forchheimer number is larger than 0.2, the fluid flow in EGS heat reservoirs experiences non-negligible non-Darcy flow characteristic.

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